The night sky loomed overhead as Natasha, Lottie, and Steve exited the truck that Steve so casually 'borrowed' from the mall parking lot. The remains of the abandoned Camp Lehigh stood before them as they carefully made their way through the gates.
"The file came from these coordinates," Natasha told them, pulling out her scanner to try and pinpoint the exact signal she had tracked.
"So did I. This is the camp where I was trained," Steve told her. Natasha nodded, looking over to Lottie with a raised eyebrow.
"I wasn't trained here, I was a few miles out,"
"Changed much?" Natasha asked Steve.
"A little,"
Lottie went to move after Natasha as she walked away, scanning the area for the signal, but stopped when she turned back to Steve. He stood at the base of the stairs, looking out onto the the path and into the woods. A small smile crossed her lips as she walked up behind him, resting her arms on his shoulders as she stood on the stairs behind him.
"Reminiscing?"
"Kinda, it's weird to be here again..." Steve trailed off for a moment, before looking up at Lottie. "If you had the chance, would you do it over again?"
"What do you mean? As in never join Project Athena?"
"I mean survive the fight," Lottie breath hitched as Steve turned back to her, holding onto her hands now. "Win the fight against Schmidt and go home. Go back to Peggy and Howard."
Lottie was silent for a moment, the question flowing through her head. In all honesty, not once since waking up in that hospital room with Director Fury had she thought of doing it over again, of redoing their last moments. Even now, she didn't have an answer for him.
"I don't know,"
"This is a dead end," Lottie and Steve snapped out of their haze, nodding at one another as they tabled that conversation for later, joining Natasha near the main building. "Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off."
Lottie's eyes glanced around the camp, cocking her head at the building that was just ahead of them. Both Natasha and Steve turned to her, waiting for her to speak.
" Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. That building is in the wrong place,"
The trio quickly moved toward the building across the way. Steve moved ahead of the two women, breaking open the lock on the door with his shield before pulling it open, the trio moving inside of the dark building.
The lights lining the room flickered on one by one, illuminating the faces of the trio. As the lights reached the end, the familiar symbol hung on the wall came to life.
"This is SHIELD," Natasha spoke as they moved through the room.
"Might be where it started,"
Lottie tried to keep her composure as she moved through the room, closely behind Steve and Natasha. Knowing that this was where SHIELD was founded, this was the very place that Howard and Peggy had begun the organization, made Lottie quite emotional.
Steve knew it immediately, taking one of her hands in his to pull her along, his shield at the ready in the other just in case.
They maneuvered themselves into one of the side rooms, stopping in their tracks as they came upon the free frames that hung on the wall before them.
"There's Stark's father," Natasha commented. Lottie's eyes filled with tears instantly as she looked at the man in the frame.
"Howie," she whispered, feeling Steve's hand tighten around her's. She glanced over to the frame with Colonel Phillips, smiling at the sight of the man.
"That Peggy?"
Steve and Lottie both looked to the frame of their friend, quickly averting their eyes and ignoring Natasha comment as they moved down the hall. Nat only sighed, quickly following behind them.
Breaking away from Lottie for a moment, Steve walked forward and inspected the wall of shelving before them. He and Lottie shared a look before he looked back at Nat.
"If you're already working in a secret office...why do you need to hide the elevator?"
Natasha pushed opened the doors of the elevator that hid behind the shelving. The two soldiers joined her inside as the doors closed, the elevator making it's slow descent toward the underground.
The lights of the bottom room flickered on one by one again as the trio cautiously walked out into the room.
Walking onto the platform before them, they were surrounded by old technology that confused Natasha.
"This can't be the data point," she tried to reason with the two soldiers. "This tech is ancient."
Lottie noticed the modern USB port sitting on the counter, taking the flash drive from Natasha and plugging it in as the systems before them began to boot up.
ＩＮＩＴＩＡＴＥ ＳＹＳＴＥＭ？
Lottie and Natasha shared a look as the computer spoke. The assassin leaned forward, typing into the system.
" Y-E-S, spells yes," she looked back to Steve and Lottie, a smirk crossing her face. "'Shall we play a game?'...it's from a-"
"I know, Tony and I watched it," Lottie cut in, followed by a nod from Steve.
"She showed me a few weeks ago,"
"Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Watson, Charlotte. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984."
The trio looked back to the computer system once again, the screen's lines forming the semblance of a face as the camera placed above the machine moved around their faces.
"It's some kind of recording," Natasha mumbled, but it felt off to Lottie. The voice...it sounded too familiar.
"I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain and Lieutenant took me prisoner in 1945, but I am,"
The face of Arnim Zola flashed across the screen, and both Steve and Lottie froze. Natasha looked to them both with wide eyes.
"You know this thing?"
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull," Lottie eyes grew narrow as she glared at the screen. "Because of him, Bucky died. This son of a bitch has been dead for years."
"First correction, I am Swiss," Lottie rolled her eyes, feeling Steve's hand take hold of her own to try and keep her under control. "Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain."
"How did you get here?" Steve demanded.
"Invited, of course,"
"Operation Paperclip after World War II," Natasha explained to the pair. "SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value."
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own,"
Lottie and Steve shared a look of concern, the same thought growing in both of their heads. The only cause that Zola had to fight for was the same thing that they tried so desperately to destroy.
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull," Steve sneered.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take it's place,"
"Prove it," Lottie challenged, gritting her teeth together.
"Accessing archive," the screen flashed with photos and videos of Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, followed by footage of Steve and Lottie in action. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed."
"That's impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you," Natasha whispered, not believing her eyes at what she saw on the screens.
"Accidents will happen," Lottie felt her face drain of color as photos of Howard and Maria Stark flashed across the screen. It wasn't an accident. The very thing that her and Steve had given their lives to stop, that they had failed to stop, had killed her best friend. Even the photos of Fury that flashed infuriated her. "HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain, Lieutenant. Your deaths amounts to the same as your lives; a zero sum."
Steve was ready to punch the screen but, unfortunately, Lottie had already beat him to it.
Her fist collided with the glasses, the screen shattering as blood began to drip from her knuckles, just as a single tear slipped down her cheek. Steve quickly grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back to him as Zola appeared on another screen.
"As I was saying-"
"What's on the drive?" Steve questioned, gaze hard as he he passed Lottie off to Natasha, letting her tend to the bloody fist.
"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm,"
"What kind of algorithm?" Lottie turned, questioning the man.
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it,"
The doors they came through began to close. Steve fired his shield toward them, but it was too late, as it only came bounding back to him.
"Steve," Natasha called out, checking her device. "we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops."
"Who fired it?" Lottie questioned as her friend looked to her.
"SHIELD,"
"I am afraid I have been stalling, my soldiers," Zola teased the group as Steve gripped the metal grate off the hole in the ground right before them, grabbing onto Lottie and Natasha and helping them inside. "Admit it, it's better this way. We are all...out of time."
Steve did his best to cover the pair as the building around them blew to pieces. Natasha's head banged off the ground as Lottie pulled her close, trying to protect her unconscious friend all while Steve held his shield to the ceiling, doing his best to keep the debris off of them.
It took a few minutes for the building to stop crumbling on top of them, but Lottie and Steve knew there was no time for resting. SHIELD- HYDRA agents would be on them in less than a minute.
Steve shoved the rest of the debris off of them as he pulled Lottie to her feet. They each threw one of Natasha's arms around their shoulders, running off down the clear path that lead into the woods just as they saw the quinjet preparing for landing.
◼ ◼ ◼
Lottie now knows that Howard's death wasn't an accident and let me tell you: she's PISSED.
Also, you see my little foreshadowing to a certain Marvel movie? HMMMM? Steve and Lottie having a little conversation about how if they could go back and do it again, would they? Interesting...
ALSO shameless plug to another writer that I love with all my heart but I highly suggest you all go and read NASASTAN and her story IMAGINE. It's a Bucky Barnes story and holy hell am I in love with it, this girl is absolutely fantastic. I had to shout her out since I love her book so much!